Parliament: Those MPs in their flying machines

Possessed by an unprecedented wanderlust, 69 MPs jet-hopped out of the country this month under various pleas. Their flights abroad left behind spreading trails of controversy; but they could not care less.

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January 13, 2014

ISSUE DATE: September 30, 1980

UPDATED: December 12, 2014 14:39 IST

"Join the Navy and see the world." Going by the happenings of last fortnight, the old pep-line meant for wartime conscripts could well have been rephrased: "Join Parliament and see the world." Possessed by an unprecedented wanderlust, 69 MPs jet-hopped out of the country this month under various pleas. Their flights abroad left behind spreading trails of controversy; but they could not care less.

The MPs left on two almost synchronous jaunts. One of these was a VIP pleasure-trip aboard Air-India AI 308 - the airline's Delhi-Tokyo Jumbo flight which had begun nine months ago but, ironically, was "inaugurated" only now. The other jaunt took 33 MPs and three government officers on a month's visit to all the six continents, on an inspection tour on behalf of Parliament. The purpose: To investigate the implementation of the Official Languages Act in Central Government offices and public sector undertakings abroad. The total expenses totted up to a mind-boggling Rs 50 lakh.

Said a senior official in the Home Ministry: "Logically, a study of the progress of Hindi in missions abroad can be conducted from New Delhi. After all, our diplomatic corps communicate in Hindi with us and not with the foreign governments."

Free junkets for VIPs on inaugural flights are customary for all commercial airlines, including Air-India, as part of their public relations effort. Air-India has organised several inaugural and familiarisation flights in the past - the number exceeds a dozen - and of these three jaunts stand out.

In the early '60s when Air-India introduced the 707 Boeing aircraft, it organised inaugural trips to almost every corner of the world and senior politicians and officials of the Tourism Ministry were invited along. Ten years later in '70 when Air-India introduced the Jumbo (Boeing 747), 80 people were taken to New York via Paris and Frankfurt.

Of these half were drawn from the Customs. International Airports Authority of India (laai), and the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation. Again in '76, a similar flight carried nearly 100 VIPs, a majority of them MPs to Sydney. On this last flight, while about half of the legislators came back on the return flight, the others took about a month to find their way back home.

Criticism: Prem Bhatia, editor-in-chief of the Tribune recounts his experience as a guest on the Air-India Super Constallation inaugural flight to London in 1954: "Let me mention only one particular incident. A very attractive Indian air hostess in a sari (she later married a millionaire in East Africa) was the star attraction. One of the journalists (not this writer) persuaded her to sit in his lap. upon which a VVIP - a former minister - insisted that the hostess repeat the gesture with him. The air hostess responded but with less than overflowing zest."

As, regards the present flight, A.P. Sharma, minister for tourism and civil aviation says blandly: "I won't comment on it either way. I will only say that it is not new. This is an opportunity for the members of the consultative committee to go round and see things for themselves. It can be looked at in that way."

However, early last fortnight, when criticism in the press against the Air-India junket was mounting, many of the 80 invitees found the offer too embarrassing to accept, and dropped out. However, 45 of them persisted till the end and went ahead with cynical disregard for public opinion. Sharma showered his largesse not merely on MPs.

Besides himself, the team included Bhishma Narain Singh, parliamentary affairs minister and Sharma's son Manmohan, who found a place in the delegation apparently for his eight years of service with Air-India.

Expose: For Air-India, whose losses mounted to Rs 50 crore last year, the current exercise of wooing VIPs could only be justified as a badly-needed laundering operation. The airline's image sank low following embarrassing revelations made by the parliamentary Committee on Public Undertakings.

Sharma (centre) and (to his right) Singh at Palam: Deaf to public opinion

Headed by Jyotirmoy Bosu, the ace parliamentarian of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the committee found that Air-India - as an organisation - was quite as prodigal as its famed mascot, the Maharaja. It disputed the airline's declared breakeven load factors, and questioned its acquisition of more and more Boeing aircraft.

The Committee's report is expected to spark off a stormy winter session at Parliament in October. The free jaunts offered to MPs belonging to all political parties is perhaps to stave off attacks in the Lok Sabha. Said Bosu: "Air-India now thinks it can wriggle out as we open our flak."

Bosu could not have been more accurate this time as his own party too chose to attend the Maharaja's court. Ajit Kumar Saha, the Marxist MP who boarded the controversial flight, observed with a poker face: "It's true that such inaugural flights cost a lot of money, but it is part of tradition - and the tradition is good."

Retorts K.N. Malik, The Times of India journalist who exposed the jaunt: "They will receive presents, travel by the Bullet Train, and will stay in expensive hotels. Are we obliged to do all this for them on an inaugural flight? And only last week 40 passengers with valid tickets could not take the flight from Osaka onwards because there was no space."

Unwilling to take any chances, Raghu Raj, Air-India's newly-appointed chairman, got four newspaper men to hop onto the bandwagon. And to lend a touch of black humour to the whole thing, Mohammed Shamim, the chief reporter of the Delhi edition of The Times of India, accepted the invitation even though his paper was the first to break the story.

Said Shamim: "There is nothing unusual in the flight except for the fact that the number of MPs is quite large and that the prime minister has disapproved of such foreign jaunts."

But Raj insisted on the propriety of the excursion when he told India Today: "The clearance has come from the highest quarters of the Government; the prime minister must have been involved in the decision-making."

Original Decision: The globe-trotting mission of the 33 members of the parliamentary Committee on Official Languages is shrouded in still deeper mystery. Apparently the team, split in three batches, is to look into the progress of Hindi in Indian offices in the USA, Canada, Europe, West Asia, Africa, Australia and South-East Asia.

Foreign junketing by the members of the Committee of Parliament on Official Languages follows its own decision taken in a meeting held in April '79 under the chairmanship of the then home minister, H.M. Patel.

The Committee was to leave last September but the dissolution of Parliament short-circuited its take-off. Soon after the Lok Sabha elections, new members of the Committee were elected and it reiterated the earlier decision to go abroad to study the progress of Hindi in foreign missions.

Home Minister Zail Singh, who presided over its latest meeting as chairman, reportedly requested the members to review their decision. Singh, who was to join the group originally, however, sent the prime minister a written note on August 29 this year, excusing himself from the trip in view of the turbulent situation at home.

Expense: According to Finance Ministry guidelines, MPs are entitled to $ 80 to $120 (Rs 640 to Rs 960) as daily allowance (depending on the city) and this alone would cost at least $70,000 (Rs 560,000) in foreign exchange. Total expenditure on the three-week trip will exceed Rs 30 lakh.

In order to defend the "Hindi trip", even stalwarts of the Opposition resorted to all kinds of semantic jugglery, trotting out the specious argument that refusal to participate in the trip would amount to a "boycott" of Parliament. "We are going almost under duress," said a Leftist MP with touching pathos.

On the other hand, the officials who had been invited by Air-India for its Tokyo flight behaved with more dignity. Nearly all the heads of public undertakings who had been included in the list, declined the offer. One of them later said: "I did not mind going on a picnic like this one. But one does not like to be exposed to such adverse publicity."

The MPs' irresistible travel-mania, and the various government agencies' readiness to cash in on it, do not portend well for the freedom of the Opposition. As Bosu bitterly observed: "Free foreign trips may turn out to be the sweetest gag ever employed to quieten the Opposition." But considering that merely 23 of India's 126 missions abroad will be visited, the travel-weary MPs may have to take to the air again to accomplish their mission.

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